1. The first one is one I didn’t learn from. I didn’t fight it when my math teachers thought teaching me was a waste of time. My primary and secondary school math teachers were not effective, and I didn’t complain when they put me in alternative (non-math) classes. I should have been more involved in my math education and asked my teachers to challenge me more, or simply invested more effort into it. Having a stronger, more confident base in mathematics is something I could use every single day. It’s a lot harder to catch up with some of that learning as an adult.

2. Second is not bringing in an expert. I’ve made this mistake more times than I can count and I still fight with it. I come from a very DIY background and I’m really curious, so I want to know how everything works and how to do it. That means that I take on tasks that I hate or are much better suited to a domain expert. I’ll spend hours/days/weeks trying to learn how to do something I don’t want to do, or that an expert can do better and faster. While it’s great to learn a new skill, sometimes it’s not a good investment. Trying to do it all myself keeps me from working with some really great experts and soaks up my time that keeps me from working on more projects.

I highly recommend checking it out. There’s a lot of good advice to be found!

"When you make a thing, a thing that is new, it is so complicated making it that it is bound to be ugly. But those that make it after you, they don’t have to worry about making it. And they can make it pretty, and so everybody can like it when others make it after you" - Pablo Picasso